


Grinding the Gears

by qwanderer



Series: A Home Dearly Fought For (VPRP-MFERP Stories) [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Character, Autistic Ina Leifsdottir, Gen, RP, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, the team learns how not to kill each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: "Don't you morons get it?!" Nadia cries, pressing hard with her thighs to not get thrown off. Griffin stops struggling for a moment, staring up at her. "It doesn't matter how many problems they throw at us! None of us are communicating! When the fuck was the last time you bothered to say anything that wasn't mission related? The survival scenario isn't the problem—WE are the problem!"
Relationships: James Griffin & Ryan Kinkade & Ina Leifsdottir & Nadia Rizavi
Series: A Home Dearly Fought For (VPRP-MFERP Stories) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334101
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Grinding the Gears

**Author's Note:**

> Written by @inaleifsdottir (me!) and @n_rizavi1 with input from our fellow twitter RP players.
> 
> There's going to be a couple of these smaller prequel stories before we get to the main #vprp #mferp story. I'm going to be shuffling the order as I post to get things mostly chronological, but that mostly means moving that first story I posted to the end until we catch up with it.

☸

Ina Leifsdottir has worked hard to get where she is. She has almost always wanted to fly the fastest planes in the world. Now that there is more than one world, she wants to fly the fastest planes in the universe.

She's weathered a lot of things to get here, and she would weather a lot more to be able to pilot the alien ships the scientists and engineers at the Garrison have been studying for the past months. 

But this might be her breaking point.

Griffin knows her cues, thank the heavens, and despite some of Cadet Kinkade's more grating attributes, at least he's quiet. But Cadet Rizavi?

A week into the three weeks they need to survive in isolation in order to prove their capacity to work smoothly in a team, and Rizavi has mostly proven that she cannot abide silence, and needs to fill it up, generally with her own voice. Leifsdottir has hardly had a moment where she could breathe easy, hear herself think, outside of sleep and showers.

Leif does not often raise her voice. But after two hours of the four of them trying to work on one of their assignments, Ina sitting next to Kinkade and his terrible aftershave and listening to Rizavi growing louder and more agitated about the problem, pestering Leifsdottir to solve the problem as if she must always know the answers, she breaks. 

"Let me  _ think. _ I can't THINK when you're being so  _ loud _ !"

She realizes that she's left the warning too late, and she has to go. Has to be away from everything that makes her feel like she's going to jump out of her skin. The only space in here that has any real privacy is the bathroom. So that's where she goes.

The resulting storm-off leaves Nadia staring after Leifsdottir with a look of surprise before it balloons into full blown agitation. _Oh. That is_ **it.**

She jumps to her feet, jaw set tight as she storms off after her, ponytail bouncing against her neck in rhythm to her furious stomping.

"Hey, wai—Rizavi, stop!" Nadia hears Griffin shout after her, hearing the sound of papers being tossed and a pen falling to the ground. They're scrambling after her but Nadia is too quick for them. Griffin still shouts after her, "I gave you an or—"

"Oh, shove it up your ass, Griffin!" Nadia snarls over her shoulder. "I've had  _ enough _ of us treating her like she's some fucking doll that's about to break if I so much as breathe in her space the wrong way!"

She's just about to reach the bathroom, her hand flying to press her palm to the panel and input the emergency passcode, when she feels big hands grab her around her arms and yank her back. Nadia spins her head back so hard she nearly gives herself whiplash, but it’s worth it because she's able to throw the blackest glare she's ever given anyone directly into Kinkade's eyes.

He blinks at her, startled, but as always, he says nothing.  _ He never says fucking anything, anyway! _

"Get your hands off me before I use this as a reason to break them, Kinkade." Nadia's voice is cold and low, the thin layer of ice betraying the faint inclination of a boiling lake beneath. She feels his grip loosen for a moment and Nadia yanks her arms out, only to be grabbed by him again. "Get off me,  _ now! _ "

"Rizavi, you are out of line!" Griffin shouts at her, finally reaching them and fixing her a furious look of his own.

"No, YOU are!" Nadia spits, and the result would've been comical the way his eyes fall open and his head jerks back in surprise. "ALL of you are! How the fuck do ANY of us expect to work as a team if we have to walk on god damn eggshells all week long around one another? How can I even hope to trust you idiots to have my back if—if—UGH, Let GO!"

Nadia crosses her arms, shoves a step between and behind Kinkade's legs before she throws her back into his stomach and drops to a knee. As expected, Kinkade goes flying overhead with a yelp, but he catches himself in a roll just in time to keep from slamming into the nearest wall. Nadia looks at him, eyes wild and somewhat satisfied that that worked before she looks back at Griffin, sees him beginning to approach her— no doubt to restrain her.

Nadia growls, legs spreading into a battle ready stance and their hands connect into a grappling move. She knows in a battle of brute strength, Griffin would be able to overcome her in a short moment, but Nadia has the upperhand when it comes to utilizing her opponent's strength against her. She sidesteps him in time to twist his hold on her hands before she hooks a foot around his knee and shoves. Griffin goes down next and Nadia pounces on him, thighs clamping around his hips and one of his arms while pinning the other over his head, she lets her entire weight drop on his stomach just as he lets out a grunt.

"Don't you morons get it?!" Nadia cries, pressing hard with her thighs to not get thrown off. Griffin stops struggling for a moment, staring up at her. "It doesn't matter  _ how _ many problems they throw at us! None of us are communicating! When the fuck was the last time you bothered to say anything that wasn't mission related? The survival scenario isn't the problem—WE are the problem!"

Nadia lets go of Griffin's arm when she notes he's stopped moving, just staring up at her with a wary, and very angry expression. She searches his eyes for something besides that. Nothing. She looks up and finds Kinkade watching her with a closed expression, obviously disapproving. Nadia scoffs, disgusted before she pushes up and off from Griffin.

"If you have a problem with me, Leifsdottir," Nadia calls out at the door. "Better figure out how to use your words and say them to my face, because I'm not going anywhere!"

There's a long and very tense silence that follows, further made present by the way she’s still breathing hard and how both Kinkade and Griffin are breathing. She hates that her own breathing sounds more pronounced than theirs. She hates that this entire time she's had no fucking luck at all in figuring out how these people work or tick.

Nadia's not the most outgoing people-person in the world. She's loud, obnoxious, abrasive, and cocky on her best days, but even she knows how to play with others and how to get along. But these three...  _ these three _ have given her  **nothing** to work with, nothing to understand besides the initial impressions one would give anyone. She never bothered to be friends with them at the academy because they never gave her a reason to try. Griffin and Leifsdottir were always off on their own and Kinkade barely spoke enough to convince her he understood Common, but SURE. This is all her fucking fault.

Nadia throws her hands up to her hair and pulls, biting back a scream. "Fuck this.  _ I _ didn't do a damn thing and I'll not have you assholes treating me like I'm the bad guy here. I'm going to my section."

Without another word, Nadia spins on her heel and storms off into her bunk, grateful at least that the angry tears don't actually start spilling down her eyes until after her back's facing them. In this pathetic space, they have no rooms. Their cots are wedged against the walls, all within grabbing space and entirely too open to let much get done. But that's how it's supposed to work. If the teams assigned here didn't kill each other by the time the month was up, they'd more or less pass. But if by the end none of them can bear to be in each other's space... then they fail...

And everything Nadia's worked so hard to achieve will be for nothing.

Nadia reaches her cot and flings herself on it, crossing her legs and yanking the book she had under her pillow onto her lap. She wipes her face angrily as she turns to the last page she was on and pretends to read... and all the while she hates herself for being everything her family wishes she wasn't.

Leifsdottir hears the commotion outside distantly. Not distantly enough. She clenches and unclenches her hands in rhythm, trying to make the universe make sense again to her frazzled nerves. 

When the silence does fall, she takes it. She breathes. She puts herself back in order as best she can. But Rizavi's right, and Leifsdottir knows it. She has to talk. About this. She has to explain. 

It's usually easier for her to tolerate, to pretend, to blend in. Not that she can really blend in well. No matter how much effort she puts into projecting herself into a human shape, she will always fall short. She will always be strange, stilted, uncanny. And the harder she tries, the more energy she loses to the attempt. But how else can she be part of something as human as this team?

Rizavi said how.  _ Use your words. _ Explain. She's never…

After the first time Griffin had provoked her into a full-blown meltdown, after she'd been forced to let the whole sixth grade class see how strange she really was, she'd stopped trying to make friends. With anyone, really. Griffin had been the one who had made the effort to start puzzling her out. 

How did you explain this to someone who'd never felt a high-pitched noise like a stabbing pain in every bone in their body? Who'd never felt the need to  _ bite something _ until the world made sense again?

Ina doesn't have the words. But at the very least, she knows she needs to demonstrate a willingness to try.

She rubs her face hard, trying to bring herself back into it. She takes a breath. She opens the door. 

Griff is studiously ignoring her. Kinkade is watching her with curious eyes. Rizavi is in her bunk, looking at a book. Eyes not moving enough to be reading. 

Ina moves towards her, until she's sitting on the floor a couple of feet away, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them. She doesn't have the energy right now to look at Rizavi, but she makes her voice work. She doesn't bother to give it any inflection. She can't spare the energy. And anyway, if Rizavi wants to know her strangeness, if Rizavi wants to know her  _ why _ s, it won't help anything to hide them. 

"I'm autistic," she says. "I don't know how to explain what it is and what it does. But if you need words for it, that is one of them. And I'll try to give you more."

The only sound that follows that is a page being pushed over. 

It's all Nadia can do not to stiffen so hard at the abrupt confession, to keep the tension from spilling into her fingers and to crinkle the pages. Because now there's a deeper reason. One that in a way, Nadia should've seen. Nadia should've understood. Leifsdottir isn't the first autistic person she's met. But damn if she isn't the first Nadia has met that's passed off for a regular, if a bit unusual, person. Nadia scowls, as she stares at the words in her hands without registering them.

She considers the silence, but her gut is still broiling with frustration, anger, bitterness...

Suddenly a lot of things about Leifsdottir make sense. Moments where she seemed slow to react, or would react a half second later. Or she'd react too soon. Nadia had interpreted all of those motions of reaction as something patronizing, even condescending. Leif would say something, explain it quickly and mechanically, but then she'd add other bits, pieces that didn't quite seem to fit in the conversation and Nadia would bristle because she'd assume it was just the blonde woman's way of being cold and sarcastic or at least impatient.

Now...

Fuck. I really  _ am _ the bad guy here. Why am I always the bad guy?

"You should not have to do what you don't want to do," Nadia says, voice hard. "You don't owe me anything. Even if I didn't know about that, I'm not an idiot, Leifsdottir."

None of this feels comfortable, because something like this, Nadia feels is usually done in private. The last thing she wants is to have Griffin and Kinkade listening to her swivel on the edge of crying like a pansy.

"But what I want is to be part of this team," Leif says. "A test like this is meant to be a stretch for anyone. I have been trying to tolerate. I haven't been trying hard enough to communicate." 

Leif feels the urge to rock, and she's used to stifling it except when she's completely alone, channeling it into some more unobtrusive stim. Clenching her hands or sucking on her teeth or chewing on a pen. But right now even that much of a mask seems disingenuous, and frankly, exhausting. 

Her motions stutter at first, aware of the eyes on her, but then she's swaying gently forward and back, a test of the changing effect of gravity on her body that makes the world fall into place. She closes her eyes for a moment to get the full effect. 

"I hide," Leif says. "Autism is so much more accepted than it once was, but in a military setting, here, where people need to have faith in my abilities, it's harder to work around what's left of the bias. It's still my choice. Perhaps not always the appropriate one."

Her eyes seek out Nadia's hands, trying to read expression from them because she simply can't look at her fellow cadets' faces right now. 

"I make myself smaller. Less noticeable. I hide. Perhaps I shouldn't have to. But also, you shouldn't have to."

Nadia still doesn't look at her as she considers her words. She's still frustrated, but at this point she isn't sure at whom. Yet with every slow breath Nadia pushes, she feels the aggravation and hostile energy broiling in her gut pour out of her. She doesn't even bother with the book in her hands anymore. With a huff, Nadia slaps the covers together before tossing it onto the sheet beneath. She turns her body to face Leifsdottir, expression firm and she hopes that the remnants of her anger induced tears have been removed by her quick moves to replace them.

"Alright then," Nadia says, expression determined. "Tell me then. If you have any issues with me, things that you don't like about me. I'm giving you full permission to unload as much of me you can't stand... that way we can find a way to deal with all this."

"I think best in silence," Ina says. She’d thought through all of this while she'd been holed away in the bathroom, collecting herself. "You insist on talking through a problem. I understand that that's probably how you work best, but it gives me no space to think when you put forth the question and then talk through the factors and then demand to know my position on the issue before I've had a chance to settle it in my head. I know I need to be able to think on my feet to be a fighter pilot. I know I need to be able to filter and prioritize and adapt. I can do those things, when I need to. But it drains my energy. I wish you would give me a moment of silence, at least, somewhere between the information and the answer. I prefer silence, to get my thoughts in order. My mind has been an uncomfortable jangling mess for most of the last three days. The more worked up you get about it, the louder you are about it, and the more difficult it is for me to make any headway on it."

Ina shakes her head. "But you are as you are. A proficient engineer and practical problem-solver. A loud thinker. I would not want to ask you to sacrifice your own efficiency to bolster mine. Perhaps... I'm not meant to work as part of a team."

Griffin stands abruptly, taking a couple of steps towards them. His eyes are on Ina. "Never apologize for who you are, Leifsdottir," he tells her, and the words are so familiar. He's said them to her again and again, but somehow every time it makes a different impact. 

Leif opens her mouth to explain that she hadn't been, but Griffin sits on his heels, so as to be relatively level with both of them, and continues speaking.

"Being part of a team means compromise, and compromise means... everyone," he says with a wince. "We could all be going about this better. It's habit by now for me to accommodate for Leif... and for Leif to accommodate for me. We're a team already," he says, looking directly at Ina again. "But we didn't get there overnight. This is going to take time and effort from all of us. It's going to take sacrifices from all of us. But in the end, if we're meant to be a team, we'll be more than the sum of our parts. The help we'll give each other will mean more than the sacrifices we've made."

Nadia snorts, earning a quick look from Griffin. He makes good speeches, she'll give him that, but she's still not entirely convinced this guy could be her leader. Not yet anyway. That sentiment must've passed through her eyes because Griffin stares her down, as if daring her to step up instead. She almost does, feeling her stomach flare at the hidden challenge in his eyes, until Leifsdottir moves, shifting. It's enough that when Nadia breaks their stare down she flinches in realization. She glances back at Griffin and fights off a scowl when she sees a hint of satisfaction on his lips.

_ Dick. _

"Alright, fine," Nadia says with a huff, hiding a roll of her eyes by flicking her bangs off her face. It's not a complete concession of power, but it's an acquiescence of sorts. "Griffin's got a point. The fact is us four are the best of the best, which means it's the most logical outcome to put us together in a team. I guess I can... learn to think a little quieter. Or at the very least back down when it's needed. But," Nadia turns to face Leifsdottir, lips pursing a bit.

"That doesn't mean you're allowed to withdraw or put on fronts. If we're to work together, every effort needs to be genuine. I can't trust my back and life on someone who's used to wearing masks for the sake of others. You need to be exactly yourself. I won't accept anything more or less."

"Riza—"

Nadia cuts Griffin off with a sharp look, this time she doesn't back down. She knows she's right and at least this way they can get all the ridiculous niceties out of the way. She looks back at Leifsdottir.

"I'm loud, even obnoxious. I'm abrasive and I can be overly blunt. I've got issues trusting people unless they earn it, and I don't like being fed bullshit and I don't like babying people. However," Nadia draws in a short breath, trying to find the right words without being overly sappy. "I... I'll try to be kinder... I'll try to work on being more conscious of your needs, but if I can make a promise, it's that I'm never going to treat you less than just because your mind works on a different wavelength than mine."

Ina hears that, and she scrunches her whole face together, trying to hear that, trying to absorb it and get a feel for what it means. Focusing her whole being on the idea of being open with the other two, the rest of her team. 

Because it would be all of them. Not just Griffin, who she knows means it when he says he doesn't mind how she is. Not just Riz, who isn't inclined to hide her thoughts and feelings. But also the enigma who is Kinkade, who she is just barely beginning to be able to read at all. She's only recently realized that she might do better to start from scratch with him, rather than using her average-human maps.

She accepts it all. And she drops everything, everything except her ability to speak out loud at all, which can sometimes feel so alien. Tone, any facial expression beyond the basic poles of tension and joy, any projection except the words, pure and cold, she drops.

"Nothing I project is a lie. It's a translation into normalcy. That is one thing I wish people would understand. My masks are not for the purposes of hiding me. They are for the purposes of revealing me. But if you can learn to read me without them, that would save me a great deal of energy. There would be much less need for me to withdraw. 

"When I do withdraw, it is not to hide. It is because I lack the energy to continue with any degree of composure. I lack the energy to keep myself sane in the face of whatever is happening. I can't promise that will never happen again."

Her face slack, she opens her eyes to mere slits, studying the reactions of those around her.

Nadia is somewhat startled to see Leifsdottir going from forcibly expressive to virtually flat in emotion. It's a little jarring and a bit surprising, but the more Nadia pays attention the more she finds that this version of Leifsdottir... was a lot more preferable than the one that was attempting to assimilate to make others feel at ease. She doesn't realize she's been tensing up around the other woman until after the mask falls and her voice drops in tone. It's a bit confusing... but...

"We'll work on it," Nadia says. She brushes off the knee-jerk reaction to say something wry or sarcastic, ignoring the instinct that warns her not to be too easy to make commitments with people she doesn't quite trust yet.  _ But I'm not trusting all of them. Not yet anyway. This can be... a trial run. _

The instinct in her gut abates, and she's satisfied with this little give. She's got nothing to lose in a trial run. Time will only tell if working with these curious people will breed the results the top brass are looking for or not. But whatever happens, Nadia decides, if this team does crash and burn, it will not be because of anything she's done. So, time to milk this trial run to see if it's worth her time or not.

Nadia crosses her arms as she looks at Griffin and Kinkade. "Alright. I'm upping the ante. Forget the survival plan. We need to learn to share. So let's start over. From the top. No masks, no secrets. I'll become an open book if it helps you guys learn to trust me and vice versa. Obviously don't expect me to spill everything out in one go, but I'm not going to lie if you ask a serious question."

"You want to have a show and tell right now?" Griffin asks, scoffing slightly. "You?"

"You've got any better ideas?" Nadia asks, motioning at the entire room. "We can continue solving puzzles and learning to barely tolerate each other...  _ or _ ..."

Nadia looks back at Leifsdottir. "We can all start solving our biggest problem instead. We've got time. I say we spend it wisely."

"I don't understand the exact nature of what you're suggesting," Ina says, "but if there is anything I can tell you that would make you feel more comfortable about working with me, please ask."

"Alright, then, first things first," Nadia says, settling on her bed by re-crossing her legs under her and pressing her elbows on her knees. She looks at Leifsdottir in the eyes, eyes serious. "Music. Top three favorite bands. Go."

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," Griffin begins, straightening up again, but before Rizavi can respond, Leifsdottir answers in her flat tone.

"Evanescence, Bjork, and Johann Sebastian Bach."

Nadia blinks in surprise, not expecting the swift response, and for a moment she exchanges a shocked look with Griffin. Without warning a snort and laugh burst from Nadia's chest and she allows the surge of it to shake her belly for a moment. She covers her face, shaking slightly as she heaves the last of her mirth before she looks up and grins. And she can't help the extra toss of dark amusement at Griffin's growing frown. Well, that certainly shut him up.

"Not what I was expecting," Nadia says, snickering as she looks back at Leifsdottir. "Fan of the classics, then? Alright. Mine are Red, Brian the Sun, and Incubus. I like some of the latest stuff from this era but I'm not a big fan of all the synths. Though if I'm in a party mood, I can enjoy most things. Griffin?"

He blinks at the two of them, confounded at the abrupt change of energy if there was anything to guess on his face. Nadia arches a brow at him, waiting. He says nothing, sighing before he walks toward the stack of papers they left strewn all over the floor.

"Seriously?" Nadia asks, deadpan. When he fails to respond again, Nadia scoffs to herself. If he's still mad at her, fine. "Kinkade?"

When they look back at him, he's lying on his cot, back facing them and suddenly Nadia feels a surge of irritation before she stomps it down with a glare. "Fine, guess it's just me and Leify then."

"There is no harm in this, Griffin," Leif says, not changing where she's looking or how she's oriented before she's speaking to Rizavi again. "My tastes do not tend to break along lines of genre or era. It's rare that I find something I truly enjoy, so when I do, I tend to remember it."

When there's silence that falls after that, allowing her to think more on the topic, she says, "I tend to resist naming a musical artist as something I like overall, since my opinions can vary so widely. Some of Soul Coughing's songs are transcendent. Others are incredibly discordant and distressing. There is a quality of rhythm which allows me to tolerate the approximately seventy-three percent of musical pieces I have heard which have that quality. Among that seventy-three percent, there are a much smaller number that I genuinely thoroughly enjoy. The remaining twenty-seven percent are a constant drain on my energy while I am experiencing them, and functioning during that time can require somewhat drastic measures."

“So no blaring music unless it’s okay’ed by you,” Nadia says, thinking of the next bit she’ll have to keep to herself. She functions on music, can’t work without it. Well, that’s hardly an issue. She just needs to grab a good pair of headphones and she’ll be set there. “I can work with that...”

Nadia nods before she looks back at Leifsdottir. “Alright, fair enough. Top three favorite movies?”

"I cannot choose three. My top four are How to Train Your Dragon, Apollo 13, The Martian, and Sully," Ina answers, flat and quick. "I have always been interested in the dynamics of flight and the problem-solving that comes with it."

"I also know Griffin's preferences," she continues, "but they're not mine to tell."

Griffin gives a sigh that's just short of being a scoff, and with clear reluctance, walks back over and settles on the ground next to Leifsdottir. "So these really are all you have? These are your deep, probing questions? This is what it'll take for you to feel like we're dealing with the issues between us?"

Nadia bristles at his attitude but she gives him a patronizing smile as a response. “You’re absolutely right, Griffin. Silly me. I should’ve immediately asked if you were spanked as a child or not.”

At his scowl, Nadia returns it with a flat expression. “If you have a problem with this you don’t have to share. Honestly, you can go back to your section of the room until you’re ready to not treat this like a joke.”

As expected Griffin’s glower only darkens, but Nadia’s previous explosion has left her slightly drained. She looks away pointedly, settling her weight behind her on her hands, even if she was kind of regretting being so cutting in response. Whatever. He can deal with it.

“Fine.”

Nadia arches a brow.

“I’m sorry.”

One of her elbows gives and she nearly falls flat on her back. She catches herself enough, looking back at Griffin in surprise.

“Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this isolation is screwing with me. But, did  _ you _ just  _ apologize? _ ”

“You’re right to want to breach the line with a logical set of questions,” Griffin replies, voice still a bit hard. Long suffering. Still Nadia stares. “Setting a baseline of information is the correct approach... would you stop looking at me like that?”

Nadia blinks, shaking her head as if she were attempting to shake out of whatever stupor his unexpected words left her in. 

“So not only did you apologize... but you agree with me?”

Griffin rolls his eyes but he doesn’t retract it. And here she thought she’d have to break his arms to get him to say something like this.

Nadia’s lips press into a wobbly line, amused, even if still a little wary. 

“You’re all my witnesses here for when I tell the world James Griffin just agreed with me.”

“Jesus, just let it go. Ask your damn questions,” Griffin snaps, annoyed.

“Uh, I did ask a few questions,” Nadia returns, patronizing tone returning. “You’re the only one who hasn’t answered any of them.”

He sighs, crossing his arms. "I don't know," he says after a moment's thought. "I don't really listen to music."

"False," Leif says. "And false again."

"Really?" His frown in her direction is more curious than anything else. "What music do I like to listen to, then?"

"You like melancholy ballads," she states. "But you try to hide it because you know I hate melancholy ballads."

An incredulous laugh bolsters the next surprised comment from Nadia’s lips, “You listen to sad music?!”

She ducks her chin then, throwing a hand to her face as she doubles over. She snorts then as she laughs, trying her damndest not to let her face show exactly how funny she thought it was.

“Why is that not surprising at all?” Nadia says as she laughs and laughs again, trembling into her hands.

"If this is how you react," Leif says, projecting now in volume, if in no other way, "then perhaps there is harm in your questions. I should not have pushed him to answer. I am familiar with ridicule. I might even say comfortable. But when it is directed at others who I care for, I will not have it."

Nadia shakes her head, unable to fully get her giggles to die down. She waves a hand.

“Relax, I’m not making fun of you, Griffin.” Nadia shakes her head again. “I have no intention to use this information to humiliate anyone, Leifsdottir. Who’s gonna believe me anyway?”

Nadia makes a vague gesture at the room around them as her laugh finally subsides. “There’s nothing wrong with finding something funny. If anything... it helps, I guess. Wow.”

She looks back at Griffin, finds him looking at her unamused and Leifsdottir’s expression still sharp somewhat. Her amusement takes another dive. Ugh.

“Got it, you guys don’t like jokes,” she says and she makes a zipping motion over her mouth. “Dead as a graveyard it is then.”

Ina tilts her head inquisitively. "I may not be able to tell very well when someone is joking or not," she says, "but I have had a fairly good source for explaining the difference between 'laughing with' and 'laughing at,' and the consensus seems to be that 'laughing at' is undesirable for the target." She pauses for a moment. "I like puns."

Mood thoroughly murdered, Nadia shrugs as she grabs her pillow and settles down on her belly, pillow squashed under her arms to prop herself enough to look at them.

“How delightful,” Nadia says wryly. “I’m sure you guys are great at parties.”

“Leifsdottir might not be able to read you, but you’re not hard to figure out,” Griffin says suddenly, his voice is hard like granite. “And right now you don’t sound like you’re even remotely interested in figuring out our ‘problem.’”

“I’m not in the business of making friends with people who don’t give a shit about me,” Nadia grunts and the irritation returns. 

“Forget it,” he says. “This was a mistake.” Those words slam into her with the force of a knife and it’s made worse when Griffin gives her a dirty look before he stands up, pulling away.  _ You... asshole. _

Nadia throws herself up onto her feet as he begins to storm off.

“Alright, you want a question?” Nadia spits at his back, “What’s your beef with me, Griffin? Why do you always act like I’m not worth your time? You  _ always _ look at my sim scores like they piss you off or rub you the wrong way. You never talk to me unless it’s generally while everyone else is around. And don’t think that I didn’t notice the way you looked like someone spit in your food when they called  _ my _ name to be on your team. So out with it. What the hell did I ever do to you?”

She doesn’t see the way his fists clench at his sides until he spins around, mouth curling into a snarl as he stomps back toward her.

“You wanna know what’s my problem?” He asks, voice harsh and furious. Nadia is almost stunned by how much of it is aimed at her. But she doesn’t back down.

“I wouldn’t have asked, otherwise!” Nadia says, throwing her arms out and beckoning him forward, she stands her ground.

“You’re a goddamn coward, Rizavi,” Griffin spits back. 

“ExCUSE ME?!”

“—And a reckless one at that!” He continues. “I’ve seen your sim scores. I watch you march in to your flight sims like you’re all that and yet I’ve never seen someone hold back like you do. You have what it takes to be better than  _ anyone _ out there but you don’t. Instead you show off, you get ridiculous scores that make you look flashy but not at all efficient. And then here you are, first to throw fists and throw a god damn tantrum but when it’s time to get down to it, you dodge the heart of the matter with ridiculous questions that—what? Do what for you? Is that really what you want to know? Our tastes?? What does that do for you?”

Nadia stares at him, gaping—no.  _ Reeling _ at his words. Who the  _ hell...? _

“You hold yourself back to impress people and that’s pathetic,” Griffin says. “I thought you reminded me of someone I knew. The way you’d tear through the sims reminded me of him, but the more I see you, the more you piss around, the more I’m convinced you’re nothing like him. You’re an attention starved brat and there’s no way in hell I could ever trust you.”

The silence that follows is  _ deafening. _ so heavy and hard it threatens to break her wrists with the amount of tension pouring into her. Nadia can’t hold it back any more. Her hands clench into fists so hard her nails dig painfully into her palms. She absolutely shakes with it.

Finally, Nadia draws in a shaky breath, tries to shove away every single word he just threw at her and pretend it wasn’t anything  _ exactly _ like the disappointed words her father threw at her when she was younger.

Her eyes well up with tears then. Nadia breaks.

“ _ Fuck _ you.” Nadia says, voice low and treacherously wounded. And only then does Griffin suddenly snap out of it, his eyes widening in shock and even horror. “You are many things, James Griffin. I just never thought being a complete  **bastard** would be one of them.”

Nadia turns, ponytail whipping behind her as she flees to the bathroom and hides behind the sliding door. And she’s furious, and hurt, and damned  _ angry _ even more so when she has to turn on the shower at full blast just so they can’t hear her break down sobbing next to the sink and toilet.

When Ina curls up tighter and puts her hands over her ears, she knows that will read as more of a reproof to Griffin than anything she could do with her words or her eyes.

The sounds of the shower going behind the door only vaguely muffles a tale-telling sound that only works to make Griffin’s stomach fall to the ground. Was... this too far?

No. She asked for his honesty. She prodded when she shouldn’t have.  _ She _ got what she was looking for. And she made fun of him and disrespected all of them for no reason at all...

She got what she deserved right? It was high time someone brought her down a few levels...

He only needs to look away from the bathroom door, where Rizavi had disappeared behind, to look back at Leifsdottir.

She’s curled up into a ball by Rizavi’s cot, face lowered and out of sight. It throws him back to a time when they were younger and he’d sworn to himself to never be a reason for her to withdraw from the world.

Whatever self-righteous excuse he’s been selling himself suddenly leaves much to be desired. Griffin’s fists clench and unclench a few times at his side.  _ Shit. _

He hears movement and when he looks up he sees Kinkade sitting up and looking at the direction of the bathroom. At that moment the pipes seem to stutter and reveal the mostly muffled sound of a heart breaking sob. Griffin’s hands clench again when Kinkade looks at him.

Disapproval. Disappointment. It’s clear as day in Kinkade’s eyes. Griffin looks away.

“...Dammit,” he mutters. “I...”

He doesn’t know what to say here. And then he looks back at Leifsdottir, finds her rocking back and forth, distressed. He moves toward her, like he has so many times in the past.

He’s kneeling in front of her before he knows it, his hands curling around her forearms gently, grounding.

“I’m sorry, Leif,” Griffin says. His throat hurts. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not mad anymore.”

Ina takes a shaky breath. She lowers her hands so she can grasp Griff's in her own tightly, then shifts slightly so she can lean against Rizavi's bed. She's already had one near-meltdown today, and the refuge that is the bathroom is being fully utilized by someone else. She's so tired, and she has to save her energy. 

She calculates how she can say what she wants to say to Griffin in the fewest possible words.

"You yelled before you knew why," she pushes out through her teeth, low and strangled as her words sometimes are when she's this tired but all that matters is getting them out. 

This is a problem he has. One they've talked through. This is how he caused the seventh-grade meltdown. This is how he provoked Cadet Kogane into punching him. 

"...I did," he admits, his own voice just as heavy with the grit of everything that's happened today. "I did. I'm sorry." 

Leif makes a tiny motion with one finger in the direction of the bathroom.

"Yes. I'll tell her too. As soon as she's ready to listen to me again."

He sighs deeply. "Assuming that ever happens. You think I ruined our chances of ever becoming a team? A real one?"

Ina squeezes his hands. She tries to put so much into it, not sure how much he'll hear without the words.  _ This is how we started. You learned. I learned. Now we're here. _

"You think she's like you?" he ventures. "I mean, not autistic. But. Just hurting and not sure how to reach out? Working on foundations just a little askew from most people's? What am I trying to say."

"Human," she pushes out.

"Fuck," he says. "Rhetorical question. Sorry. Fuck. Leif, don't use your last spoon trying to help me figure this out. It's my mess. But you're right. You're usually right."

Ina's head moves slightly as she prepares to respond, but Griff interrupts. "And don't throw my words about sacrifice back at me right now. Don't bullshit me. It  _ would _ be your last spoon. You want to go to bed early?" When she hesitates, he says, "I can make it an order if that'll help."

She nods, and then she lets him help her up and to her own nook, lets him place her boots where she prefers them to be with military precision, lets him tuck her in and rub her shoulder through the blankets.

"Rest," he says. "No more yelling tonight. I promise."

It's a full hour before Nadia moves from her curled up position by the toilet. The shower had long turned off, the automatic timer to preserve resources having silenced the pipes and the spewing water twenty minutes after Nadia had her breakdown. In her hands is a balled up wad of used toilet paper, soggy from the weight of her tears and snot. Her shoulders slump down. She feels like a shadow. Small and easily ignored by anyone who bothers to look.

_ Coward. Attention starved brat. How could I possibly trust you? _

It still hurts, and even after an hour her eyes still manage to leak liquid pain down her cheeks to join the dark spots on her Garrison issued dark gray joggers. And yet even despite the sharp pain squeezing hard into her diaphragm, a dark and mirthless smile pushes at her lips.

It figures even after leaving her family to pursue her dreams that she wouldn't be free of the criticisms that forced her to go. She hoped she'd be able to leave it all behind. The disappointment. The harsh lack of pride. The immense standards left wanting. And yet, even after rising to the top, after being called one of the best the Garrison has to offer... none of it would be enough, would it? Even after all this time, she's still under a vast shadow, and the sun is out there shining, but it's so out of reach... She's still a shadow, leaving a dark stain on people's affections. In the end, no one, not even her own family, could accept her decisions.

It all figures.

Nadia looks up, stares up at the dim light of the bathroom, having turned down on idle when it failed to register movement through the sensors. Even her movements weren't enough to get it to wake up. She's just a shadow. Nadia lowers her head back down.

Fine. If they're so fucking tired of her then she'll... stop. She'll just stop. She'll do as she's told. She'll follow orders. She'll bow to the standards of the machine. She'll stop fighting it. Just until she can find the person she needs to be to... get out of whatever this is.

Griffin can keep his opinions. Her father can keep his disappointment. Julia can fucking disappear forever. David can keep his pathetic excuse for love to himself.

She doesn't need any of it. She's survived alone for a long time. She can keep surviving on her own if she has to.

Maybe she won't be chosen to be part of the MFE program, maybe she will. Maybe she'll be assigned to another team and she can find success elsewhere... but she isn't going to let  _ these _ people decide who or what she is.

Time to stop.

Nadia lifts herself up to her feet, legs aching uncomfortably. She hisses, wincing at the pins and needles flowing through her thighs down to her toes. A quick stumble and catch against the wall and Nadia is back up. Stable. Slow and easy. The lights to the bathroom blink on and she looks into the mirror. It's hard to see with all the dried salt smudging on her lenses. Her face is red and blotchy, eyes swollen red with the force of her previous agony and her hair's all a mess. Whatever.

She reaches for the sink and activates the flow of water with an uncaring wave of her hand. She catches the cold water in her hands and splashes it under her glasses. Before long, Nadia is back up and rubbing her face clean with a towel. She looks back into the mirror and sees a shadow staring back.

She looks away, presses the force power button on the lights and she's immediately caged in darkness. Better.

With a slow sigh, Nadia presses her hand to the panel and the door to the bathroom opens. She looks up. Their shared bedroom is dark now. Lights turned off save the dim artificial sconces near the fridge. Her eyes take a moment to adjust as she steps out and looks at the beds. Leifsdottir is tucked into hers. Kinkade's big figure is a black mountainous slope on his cot. All there except...

Nadia's nerves shoot her through with a low dose of adrenaline when she senses something a foot away to the left of her. She tenses, stomach going tight as she prepares to defend if needed. When Griffin does nothing, Nadia finally turns to look at him, grateful that it's dark enough she doesn't really see all the minor details of his face. He's just leaning against the wall, arms crossed and chin ducked down.

For a tiny second she thinks he may have fallen asleep like that, but he moves, lifting his chin to her. Nadia looks away, says nothing as she begins to head to her cot.

"Rizavi."

Nadia stops, keeps herself still. She expects him to speak again but when he doesn't she finds herself growing annoyed again. She smothers it all down. She's tired.

"What." She's too tired to even speak to him like she would a superior officer. Technically speaking, he isn't. He’s just  _ acting _ S.O. and as much as she's thoroughly enjoyed (not) calling Griffin "sir" during their time here, she just doesn't care for it right now. Still he stays silent and Nadia bites down on her lip.  _ Fine. _

She turns and faces him, body straightening and arms crossing behind her back as she deadpans a quick but effective, "Yes, sir?"

His arms are at his sides and he just... fucking stares at her. It's too dark to read his face or his expression and she kind of wishes she could, just to see what his deal is. After an eternity of testing her patience, Griffin finally takes a step forward and Nadia has to brace herself for whatever is coming when he breaches her space somewhat.

"Get some rest," he orders, voice low. "We need to catch up to schedule in the morning."

Nadia gives him a quick nod and she looks away. She goes to walk again but her heart stops when she feels his hand suddenly grip to her wrist. She spins back around, eyes wide and a shot of reproach spearing through her gut.

"I..." he says and Nadia can't help but stare. It's still dark, but she can see his eyes at this distance. His grip on her wrist is soft, warm... calloused. Nadia yanks her arm away, instinctively. He looks up at her when she does but Nadia doesn't give him the satisfaction of meeting her gaze as she looks away.

"Good night, sir." Nadia says, voice tight. She doesn't give him another chance to speak as she turns and heads toward her cot. She doesn't want to think of him. Or Leifsdottir. or Kinkade. She doesn't want to deal with them right now. She’s going to sink into her much-too-hard mattress and far-too-flat pillow, close her eyes under the far-too-scratchy blanket and hope that come morning, she doesn't have to put up with this anymore.

She doesn't need them to become the best the Garrison has ever seen. The trial run stops now.

☸

In the morning, everything feels awkward and stiff. Between all of them. They silently move around each other, the only words between them barely-muttered shells of pleasantries. 

Ina is accustomed to not knowing how to act. She can usually find someone to imitate. But now, they're all equally lost. She can read it in all of them, in the hesitant movements and the speculative, searching glances. 

Things aren't even easy between her and Griffin. She doesn't like the person she'd seen in him last night. And he knows it. 

Leif knows that Griffin has learned to be a good friend to her, and she thinks she has a rough idea of how to be a good friend to him. But he needs to learn how to be friends with other people as well. And so does she. But how can she learn without any kind of example? 

She has been trying. She has been doing her best to do all the right things, say all the right things, make all the correct facial expressions, act like she's one of them. 

But that's not what they want.

Her veneer makes Rizavi angry. She seemed more at ease with Ina's raw self, the one that usually makes people make faces at her and tell her she's cold, unfeeling, selfish, robotic. 

She's not even sure that trying to be "one of them" the way she is with the rest of the Garrison is even going to make her seem like one of whatever kind of person Kinkade is, at all. He doesn't do any of the things she's been trying to imitate.

Ina has no goddamn idea how to be a person to people who don't want her veneer. But she has to try. Griffin isn't getting anywhere with these two. He's being his usual kind of asshole self with them. It took Griff and Leif years to learn to work around both of their idiosyncrasies and help each other, instead of hurting each other. 

They don't have years, here. Even forgetting the squadron, the alien hybrid planes. If they're going to stay sane for the rest of the isolation period, they need to figure this out.

Ina eats her breakfast precisely as she has been for the last few days, and then her spoons are at optimal levels, and she can face the issues at hand. 

Rizavi first, or Kinkade?

On the one hand, Rizavi is hurt. They know Rizavi is hurt. She's shut down. It looks enough like one of Ina's nonverbal periods that she aches with sympathetic pain. Whatever Griffin had managed to say to her when she finally left the bathroom, it hadn't worked. They need to deal with that as soon as they can. But if it is anything like one of Ina's nonverbal periods, prodding her before she comes out of it on her own won't help. 

On the other hand, they've made no progress at all in developing a rapport with Kinkade. They can't even guess at what the rough spots might be, because they have a near-zero amount of information. There's no telling how long that process will take, and they need to get started. 

Ina's eyes find Griffin. Griff is looking back at her over his coffee. She raises her eyebrows, then inclines her head first in Rizavi's direction, then in Kinkade's. 

Griffin heaves a sigh, frowns in Rizavi's direction contemplatively, then turns to look at Kinkade, already back in his bunk again after a perfunctory breakfast. Griff takes another sip of his coffee, then pushes himself up, standing straight before striding over to Kinkade.

Kinkade doesn't move a muscle, continuing to look at his datapad.

Leif watches, and she can see Griff visibly give himself a talking-to about the yelling, this time. 

"Kinkade," Griffin begins. "I know this team has gotten off to a rough start. I believe we can recover. But we all do need to be a part of making that happen."

Kinkade's eyes flick up to Griffin, and he makes a low, noncommittal hum. 

"I need to know that you're going to do your part, here."

Ina has to give him credit for not raising his voice one iota. But his body language is already getting more agitated. Kinkade makes no move to respond, this time.

"So are you going to be part of this team, or not?" Griff's tone isn't louder. It's just gotten more icily precise. Leifsdottir spares a moment to wonder whether it's in imitation of her.

Kinkade hums again. 

"That's not an answer," Griff says, and Ina can read the threat in his quiet tone.

Kinkade's only response is to raise his eyebrows and give Griffin a pointed look, a look that says he's listening.

"Alright, look," Griffin begins, exhaling his words in a huff. "I get it. You might think this is a waste of time. We all probably feel that way one way or another. And honestly, we're not the most familiar with one another. But we cannot allow all of this to get in the way of our responsibility as a team. We have a duty, first and foremost, to set aside our differences and function as a unit."

Kinkade chooses then to stand up as Griffin speaks, moving towards the small kitchenette area. Griffin follows him, clearly not done with his speech. 

"Which means we have to communicate with one another. Rizavi... wasn't wrong about what she said yesterday." He motions to her with a hand. At this, Rizavi arches a brow before she pointedly looks away. Griffin's jaw tightens at that but he draws in a steadying breath as he continues to follow Kinkade. They stop short of the fridge as Kinkade opens the door and disappears behind it for a moment. "So I expect you to start communicating in full sentences around us. Grunts and hums aren't going to cut it anymore. Do you understand?"

The fridge door closes with a muted snap, Kinkade merely turns to Griffin with a water bottle in hand. He doesn't really look at him so much as glance at him for a moment before he starts walking past Griffin without a word. Griffin flares at that, hand flying out to catch Kinkade by the arm, "Hey—"

What happens next ends in a flash. Griffin's grip on Kinkade's arm is swiftly and firmly removed by Kinkade throwing his shoulder to the side and stepping back. There is an abrupt burst of irritation in Kinkade's eyes that flares as he stares Griffin down.

"I'm not finished," Griffin says, curtly.

"Don't touch me," Kinkade replies back, and it's surprising in its own right. Griffin's eyebrows shoot up just as Rizavi seems to straighten in shock. A moment later, Kinkade very pointedly adds, "Sir."

Griff hasn't looked away, and now they're caught in a staring contest. "This isn't going to stop because we ignore it, Kinkade," Griffin says. 

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Kinkade mumbles, and turns to go back to his bunk.

Griff takes a breath.

Ina moves to get up, and in the process, taps her hand flat down on the table. Not loud enough to startle, but loud enough to get their attention immediately.

Both boys turn to her with wide eyes.

"No yelling," she reminds Griff.

Griff straightens, as if she's his superior now, and he's getting a dressing-down. Kinkade frowns at her, but not in a way that seems to signal disapproval.

They need help. She stands, and walks over to them. She has no earthly idea what she is doing. 

She comes to rest in front of Kinkade where he’s sitting on his bed again, hands behind her back, weight even on her feet. "What do you want?" she asks him, and observes his reactions. 

His head skews just slightly to one side. His thumb fidgets on the lid of his water bottle. His gaze drifts lower, landing on her boots. 

_ Energy draining rapidly, _ she reads,  _ frustrated with himself for not knowing how to make this work. Still trying. _ If his body language is more like hers. That's the working hypothesis right now. 

"All right," she says. "We'll come back to you. No yelling, no grabbing." She raises an eyebrow at Griff.

He nods in acknowledgement.

Ina has no idea why he trusts her with this. Maybe it's simply because he has no better choices right now. 

She takes a breath, and looks over at Rizavi.

Rizavi is staring into her coffee, somewhere between focused and expressionless. It's impossible to know what she thinks of the scene that just took place in front of her. Ina picks up her tea and moves it to the space across from Rizavi, the space Kinkade had left vacant. She sits, and Griffin retakes the seat beside her.

She thinks about what she managed to absorb past the overwhelming noise of the yelling last night.  _ Attention-starved brat _ looms the largest. She remembers learning some of the whys behind Griffin sometimes being so loud. She knows sometimes Griff lashes out at people who remind him of himself. 

_ Robot. Cheater. There's no way someone that good is human. Freak. _

Ina takes another breath. They are so far past that now. How did they get here?

_ Maybe I am a freak. Maybe that's not a problem. _

"There is nothing wrong with needing attention," she tells Rizavi softly. "It's human."

Nadia doesn't acknowledge Leifsdottir's words. She pulls her teacup to her lips and takes another sip. She takes it all in silently; The persistent tension in the air, even the odd shock of listening to Kinkade speak in more than just a minute sound. A part of her wants to laugh cold and wry at the way all of this was failing to work according to their desires.

Ina tilts her head, analyzing Rizavi, then begins to mirror her motions. For most people, she'd soften it. The precision could be seen as mockery. Ina learned that the hard way. But Rizavi asked for her unvarnished self. So she copies the motions as precisely as she is capable of. 

_ I am paying attention to you. All of my focus is on you. _

Once Rizavi finishes her tea, she seems to just sit, so Leif sits too. Leif is patient. This is an exercise that she wants to give a solid chance to. She doesn't have any other real ideas. 

Neither does Griff, it seems, since he hasn't lost patience yet. He isn't taking part in the mirroring, but he seems to be going along with the basic idea of behaving calmly and quietly, since he hasn’t drawn attention to himself. He’s leaning against a wall, close—everywhere is close, in isolation—but not in anyone else’s space, his arms crossed loosely across his chest. 

This is something she remembers from when she was a child, Ina realizes. There were people who had done this for her, sat and imitated her for days, for weeks. Trying to get her to realize that she was one of them, accepted, loved. Trying to get her to communicate.

If she'd remembered when she started this that the experiment she's trying is something with that kind of a time scale, she might have thought better of it. 

An hour and a half in, Griffin shifts, clearing his throat, and Ina can see him looking up from his d-pad and standing straighter out of the corner of her eye. 

Leif falters. The evidence is that she's wrong about this, and oh, she hates being wrong. It's better with Griffin there, to help her get past the wrong thing and get everything straightened out again, but this is her attempt to find the way after Griffin ran out of ideas. If even Griff doubts that this has any value…

Griffin has doubts. None of this is working at all like he's hoping, and he knows this. Knows it well enough in the way Ina has to wrestle him for control, the way her body mimics Rizavi's posture with an air of desperate tightness that doesn't sit well in his gut. In the time they've spent just  _ sitting _ , Rizavi has only moved a few inches here and there, eyes pointedly elsewhere and mouth unusually tight. And in that time spent just  _ fucking _ sitting, Leif has only followed her movements, mimicking.

But Rizavi is not  _ like _ other people Leif's dealt with. Even if she was similar. Based on experience and hearsay, Nadia Rizavi best fit the description of a maverick. Her only saving grace was that she wasn't at all like Kogane had been when they were younger. She wasn't the kind who disobeyed orders or had issues with authority, but damn her if she wasn't always toeing the line of being disrespectful... at least with  _ him, _ that is.

Griffin thinks of her words, finds himself growing more and more agitated that she's forced an outburst like that from him as if she hadn't been the first to goad him into doing so. She was always more or less pushing him, daring him, questioning him when he's known he's made himself clear.

He throws a glance at Leif, finds her looking at him warily, expression tight as if asking him not to stir up more trouble. But the silence.... this  _ fucking _ silence.

"Leifsdottir, could you give me and Rizavi a moment?"

She tries not to feel the words like a blow, but she does. The worst part is that she knows he's right. People are not her area of expertise, and never will be.

She nods tightly, and retreats to her bunk.

Griffin watches her go, tries not to feel like a jerk for the way she moves quickly and quietly. The air around her is thick with dejection; he just hopes she'll understand. He draws in a breath before looking directly at Rizavi and is momentarily surprised by the fact of her looking directly at him. Her eyes. He's never quite noticed them before but in this dark atmosphere it's almost blaringly obvious how the gold flecks in her eyes overwhelm the remaining brown of her irises.

He shrugs that thought to the side, only mildly put off by the random intrusiveness of that detail and chalks it up to cabin-fever induced hyper-observation. He was prepped to launch into another spiel; inspirational speeches and lectures are the bread and butter of his original leadership strategy here. But this new... perspective makes something else pop up in his mind, an entirely different avenue for an unexpected situation, something potentially dangerous... and yet it was all that made sense.

"You," he says, voice firm. "Get up."

Rizavi's eyebrows furrow for a moment, staring at him with a flattened expression as he pushes up on his feet. The chair scrapes against the ground as he pushes it back under the table. He's decided. There are only so many ways one can handle someone as incorrigible and disrespectful as Rizavi. And since she was so willing to throw hands... then he'll give her a target to throw them.

The chair's only just stopped squealing as his hands go to his uniform shirt and undershirt, gripping hard around the canvas as he pulls and sweeps it over his head in one smooth motion. He tosses the shirt onto the table as he steps back, shivering as the cool air slams into the skin of his torso and back.

He looks back at Rizavi and is almost amused by the way her eyes bulge, her jaw drops, and she looks over him in shock. Almost.

"We're sparring," he announces, lifting an arm across his chest to stretch his trapezoid muscles and triceps. "Right now."

Rizavi does stand then, slowly and warily. After a long moment, she frowns. "You're serious."

"I wouldn't have taken off my shirt otherwise," Griffin replies quickly before he winces. "...That came out wrong."

Only instead of looking disgusted, Griffin spots a flash of... something... in her eyes before she snorts and looks away. Is... she smiling? Griffin shakes it off with a scowl.

"Do you want to do this or not?"

"You're the one who demanded I suddenly spar you," she replies and whatever amusement he thought he saw on her face was replaced with an arched brow and a cold appraisal. "And you definitely didn't make it sound like I have a choice."

"You're right," Griffin says as he moves toward the chairs and the table. He inhales sharply before he shoves, muscles growing warm as the chairs and table shriek in protest against the smooth floor. When they've been shoved near the wall he throws Rizavi a quick glance—she almost looks impressed before she frowns again—as he moves toward the center of the space he'd just made.

"You don't have a choice," he says. He hears Leifsdottir say his name, anxious. He shrugs it off for a moment and hopes that she'll trust him in this. Just this once. He sinks into a fighting stance, hands open and prepared in front of him. Still, Rizavi stares at him, rooted to her spot. He goads her a bit, wiggling his fingers.

"Come on, Rizavi," he says, lips pulling into a smirk. "Even you wouldn't say no to a chance to lay my ass on the ground, would you?"

That seems to do it. Whatever was holding her back breaks and a gleam of predatory determination spreads from her eyes to the rest of her body. Griffin almost feels victorious that it worked... until her hands also jump to her uniform shirt and she begins to tug.

"Wha—" he sputters, jaw dropping when Rizavi crosses her arms and pulls, taking her uniform  _ and _ undershirt with her. She stands before him in nothing but her pants and standard issue sports bra. It takes him by surprise for a moment, as he watches her toss the clothing on the table where his rests, and damn him, but his eyes do wander.

She's not dainty like other women he's seen. Nadia Rizavi may be small in stature but her arms are pronounced with muscles, the soft skin of her belly cinches tight over hard abs, dipping into the divots of her obliques. He forces his eyes to meet hers swiftly before he dares look at her breasts, throwing off any momentarily piques of interest from his mind. It's only fair, he thinks, given how he'd thrown the gauntlet first.

"Fine," Rizavi says as she steps into the space he prepped for them. She twists her chin with a couple of jerks, the sound of her neck joints pop follows. She starts shaking her body and she hops on the balls of her feet—and he can't help but follow the bounce of her breasts there for a teeny moment—before she also sinks into a stance. "But remember, Griffin..."

Rizavi lifts her hands and her own lips curve into a smile that borders disrespectful and far over into daring. It makes him bristle, annoyance filling him to the brim as she says, "You asked for it."

He snorts and jerks his own chin to the side. A crack bursts from his neck and he fixes her a firm look. "Rules of the spar, Rizavi. No face shots, no kicks. Punches and grappling are acceptable."

Her smile drops for a moment as she considers it before she nods, "Fine. Elbows?"

"So long as you don't break any bones," he says.

"No promises," Rizavi says. At his arched brow she grunts. "Fine. I can still kick your ass while holding back."

"Last rule," he says. She waits. "Winner of the spar is decided by who yields first."

"And the spoils?"

At this, he ponders for a moment before deciding. "Winner can ask for anything."

Interest does flood her eyes then. "Anything?"

"I don't like to repeat myself," he says. "Fair?"

"Fair," Rizavi says and it's all the warning she gives him before she's suddenly lunging toward him.

Griffin gasps, narrowly dodging a sudden elbow to the face as she spins past him. He scowls at her as she whips back around to look at him. "Rizavi..." he hisses, warningly.

"Doesn't count as a face shot if it doesn't connect, Boss," Rizavi quips back and throws another punch. He dodges again, quickly parrying the next two jabs and a cross with his forearms and a calculated slap to her arm. Griffin keeps a studious glance at the space around them as they rotate around each other. The space they have to spar is a little tight, just shy of a full six feet. It's up to him to keep her close, so he doesn't try to duck away or spin out of her reach, but receives or parries her blows instead.

Griffin moves in quick and calculated movements, eyes honing on any sign of tension that could betray her movements. Yet Rizavi is shockingly quick and agile, and he finds himself on his toes a few times as she feints at him and forces him to spin out of reach a few times.

She drops a hand suddenly and Griffin notes his mistake to attack too soon a moment too late. She steps in, her leg swinging high. Griffin grits his teeth and retracts as much of his move as he can to block the kick she aims at his bicep. The force very nearly throws him off his feet, but Griffin is fast too. He swings the arm she's struck up and around, swiftly catching her calf between his bicep and ribs. He holds tight.

"That's twice you've broken the rules," he says, teeth tight. Rizavi doesn't even look remotely sorry. "Let me guess, it doesn't count if it doesn't connect fully?"

"Something like that," Rizavi says and there's a smirk on her face that widens before Griffin can guess as to why. Suddenly—all too suddenly—she hoists herself up against him, hands grabbing onto his neck before she swings her other leg up and over his opposite shoulder. The movement forces him to shift all of his weight on his right leg, following directly into her weight and motion. She spins him, her torso yanking them down to the ground, but he ends up landing on his back.

"Gh!!" Griffin grunts, barely avoiding smacking his head on the floor. She's pinned him to the ground with her legs and before Griffin has a chance to breathe, she's grinding her hips hard into his chest and neck.

"Yield!" She says, panting somewhat over him. Her glasses are gone, possibly thrown off when she did that ludicrous move just now. But Griffin isn't done. Not even close. She forgot to pin his other arm beneath him. He uses that to land a firm jab into her side. Rizavi grunts, eyes widening at the sudden pain. He uses her shock against her, hoisting his hips hard enough to throw her off him to the left.

Much like she'd done before, Griffin utilizes the force of the motion to scramble off and then back on top of her. He grabs her wrists, one as he pushes her to the ground, and two when she throws her legs around to grip hard around his torso and hook to his back. It takes all of a few seconds for him to manage and force her arms back down. She's  _ strong. _ Stronger than he expected her small frame to hold, and she puts up a damn good fight to keep him from pinning her all the way down.

They're gasping and grunting wildly now. Her legs cage his ribs and squeeze him until he almost wheezes. Even so, he holds himself back somewhat, mindful not to go too far and hurt her. But Rizavi bucks her hips hard against him, trying to flip him off. She almost does, and his feet fly to spread and not let her gain the leverage. His foot ends up hitting the side of one of the chairs. Sweat burns down his forehead as he fights off another attempt from her to dismount him, yet he almost has her.

"Agh!" Rizavi snarls, lips curled back and revealing white teeth. Their eyes remain fixed on one another's. His lower back is burning and so are his abs. Griffin knows then that he can only do one thing to win. He drops his full weight on her, legs spread wide behind him as she struggles. She loses some of her grip and that's when Griffin manages to shove the rest of his weight onto her arms. Her wrists slam into the ground and he stays firm. He's got her.

Rizavi pauses for a moment, gasping hard and heavy beneath him. Through his chest he can almost feel the way her heart rams against his, he glares at her.

"Do you yield?"

"Fuck you," Rizavi hisses. She rolls her hips again, tries to roll him off. Griffin bites his lip at that, shakes off the unwelcome surge of heat that flashes through him when she does. He rolls his hips back in retaliation and she gasps.

"Last chance," Griffin warns. "Yield."

"Or what?" She asks through slow steadying breaths. "You'll get bored? Throw another 'tantrum'? Call me names?"

"I'm perfectly comfortable where I am," he replies, grunting a bit when she squeezes his ribs again. "You can try to throw me off but I've got you pinned. In the rules of the spar, I've already beaten you. Now, yield."

"Bastard," she hisses.

"Now who's calling names?" Griffin shoots back.

Rizavi glowers at him darkly. The more he lays on her though, the more he realizes how much skin he has pressed on her. How much of it rubs on him. He tries not to think about it. He's stressed. It makes sense that his mind is picking now of all inopportune times to tempt him with the unlikeliest of options. Besides. He's never been into girls anyway. This is just a reaction to actually touching someone for the first time in weeks.

A short silence follows before he squeezes her hands again, impatient. "Well?"

"Ugh," Rizavi grunts, eyebrows furrowing again before she rolls her eyes. Her body begins to go slack, the grip of her thighs loosening their hold around his waist and ribs. "F-Fine... I yield."

Griffin nods, letting go and moving to get off her. He doesn't waste time dawdling and does so quickly. It's easier to forget how small and warm her body was pressed against his. It's easier to get it all under control before he starts doing anything else. He's professional. Yet he doesn't miss the way her expression points hatefully off to the side as she slowly pulls herself up off her back. He extends a hand.

Rizavi looks surprised when she sees it, looks up at him, still glaring at him. He doesn't return her aggravation at all, if anything he feels... better somehow. The knowledge that he was able to beat her here feels like a milestone he's earned.

"It's a hand, Rizavi, it won't bite," Griffin says, shrugging. "You got real close to beating me there. ...That move you did to throw me on the ground was amazing."

And he means it, weirdly enough. For once... he doesn't totally hate her. This seems to translate then because Rizavi looks up at him again and some of the hostility in her eyes falters. Finally, she lifts her hand and takes his. It's soft. Warm. Calloused but not so much that it's like grabbing onto a flower. There's strength in her bones as she pulls herself up. He can see much of the way her muscles contract and move smoothly as she effortlessly rises to her feet.

When she's up, he lets go of her hand, curious when she doesn't immediately move away.

"You... weren't so bad," Rizavi replies and she shrugs also. "Even if you are completely predictable."

"Completely predictable just managed to beat you fair and square," he returns. Rizavi blinks at him, re-inspecting him. "Which means I get my reward."

Her lips purse and she clicks her teeth against her tongue; whatever it was he saw in her eyes is gone. She looks at him expectantly, crossing her arms under her breasts. "Fine. What do you want."

"An answer to a question," he says. She arches a brow again at him. "Why do you hate me so much?"

Rizavi recoils, startled. She frowns at him before looking away. She glances up at him before she moves around him towards the kitchen, "Is that seriously your question?"

"Yes," Griffin says, watching her go toward the fridge but he doesn't follow. "Yesterday you shouted at me about all these things I've done to make you think I hate you. But you make it seem like I'm the only one with a problem. Don't think I haven't noticed the way you roll your eyes when my name is called. Or how you leave the moment I walk into a room. You're not the only one paying attention, Rizavi. And your sim scores aren't the only thing I've paid attention to."

She stops short by the fridge, suddenly still as her hand grips around the handle. Her back faces him and the rest of them, brown skin lightly glistening under the bright light overhead. His eyes follow the lines of her arms, the way her fingers don't curl into fists despite the way they shake.

"I gave you an answer yesterday," Griffin speaks again and he knows it's dangerous to bring that back up, but something about her makes him want to do it anyway. "It wasn't a perfect answer... and... I'm... I'm sorry..."

She moves, head turning toward her shoulder before she does twist those final inches. Surprise makes her gold flecked eyes widen as she looks at him. He sighs and takes a few steps toward her but stops short of a full yard from her.

"I... shouldn't have said what I said," Griffin says, voice low. "...About the things I called you. It was wrong. Resorting to petty insults is not proper leadership. I accept that. I'll take responsibility for that. So allow me to apologize... and to hopefully understand you better."

Rizavi stares at him for a moment longer before she lets go of the fridge handle. She places her hands on her hips, fingers tight around the fabric of her pants. After a moment she draws in a breath and she looks at him.

"You're a brat," she says, flat and straightforward. Griffin blinks but says nothing. "You're arrogant. You honestly come off as a smart-ass know-it-all and it's annoying as all hell. Also, you kiss ass like no one's business and it's hard to take you seriously when you're so eager to please the higher ups and sometimes I swear you don't have a single bone in your body that knows how to have a good time. Sometimes I swear you're a fucking robot with how well you take orders and it's annoying as hell. You piss me off, James Griffin, because you're mouthy, and abrasive, and you pick fights with people you don't like at all and..."

She trails off as she looks off to the side. "...You're a lot like me."

Griffin blinks in surprise at that, stunned. She lifts a hand to press to her neck and she sighs.

"You're... everything I want to be... as a soldier. A Pilot. You're efficient. You also stand up for others who can't defend themselves. You make friends with people who others dub undesirable... and... I admire you. I don't like saying it, but I do. Everything you achieve and make happen, all of the hard work you put studying instead of pissing it off partying... it makes me want to do the same. I've heard people say that you have what it takes to be just as good as Shirogane and... I believe that."

She looks at him and he doesn't look away from her when she gazes into his eyes. "And... you're right about me. Being a coward. Because even if I do work hard and I push myself... I'm afraid I won't be good enough. I'm afraid that I'll just be the disappointment my fa...."

She breaks off suddenly. Griffin frowns at that. She clears her throat before she says, "I sabotage myself. I know I do. I get it. So, if you still feel like you can't trust me, then it's better you guys find someone else to be on your team."

She opens the fridge and fishes out a water bottle as he stares after her. She's walking past him, eyes downcast and a bottle in her hands, when his hand shoots out and catches her by the wrist. He doesn't know why he does, only that he has to.

"I picked you to be on my team," he says suddenly, honestly. "I wasn't allowed to say this. But I did. I chose you. Like I chose Leifsdottir. And like I chose Kinkade."

He glances over his shoulder, turning to see if Leif is listening, if Kinkade is paying attention. They are. Their eyes are on him like Rizavi's are in this moment.

"I was chosen among others to select a small squad in preparation for a new emergency event. I was told to not share this with you all until I know without a doubt that I wanted to keep you as my team."

He looks back at Rizavi, "You were selected and brought to my attention and from there I was told to pick three pilots. I don't regret my choices. I never have. I was worried that I would fail. That we would fail because I was at fault in failing to unite you in the way the Garrison needs. Everything I said came out wrong or it would cause bigger issues and I failed to heed the friction between you three. This... is my fault."

He lets go of her hand before he inhales slowly and sighs. "You're not a coward, Rizavi. You're skilled. One of the best I've ever seen. You have the potential to be one of the greatest pilots the world has ever known, and I don't see that in your sim scores. I saw that in your refusal to back down from a fight. So no. I won't accept you to yield here. Not while we still have a chance at being a better team."

He looks back at Leif and finds relief in his stomach when he sees her hands on her lap and her body still enough that it isn't concerning.

"I still believe in us, so... let me have another chance... at being your squad leader."

Griffin acts without hesitation. He does what needs to be done, to get Rizavi to talk, to respond, to communicate. Ina is suddenly struck by the meager toolbox she truly has for dealing with people, people other than her family and Griffin, who, really, adapt to her so much more than she adapts to them. What business does she have, being on a team? 

Working in groups has been a curse for Leif her entire academic life. For her, and probably for the other people in her group, as well. She likes to do things her own way. She always has. No matter how much her parents tell her that it's who she is and that it's okay, no matter how much they tell her that she can achieve anything she wants, it still feels like a failing at times like these.

She can't read people, not right away, and sometimes not ever, no matter how much data she collects. She can't figure out what they want from her. She can't figure out how to be that person. 

She wonders if she screwed things up with Kinkade. She wonders how she'd tell. 

She wonders if the rest of the team would have figured themselves out already if they hadn't been trying to tiptoe around her.

Ina curls up on her bed, and her whole soul vibrates with a pure, clear note of despair. She lets Griffin do his work and wonders if she is going to be the piece that causes this whole precariously-balanced puzzle to fall apart. 

It's when Griffin looks back at her, asking if they're okay, if she trusts him with this, that she starts to feel okay about her life again, if not about this whole "team" prospect.

Griffin's practically family by now, so that's different. When he says "We're a team" it means "We're a family." Families kind of have to take care of each other. They kind of have to compensate for each other's weaknesses.

But then maybe, what that says is that the two words aren't really that far off. Maybe this team needs to trust each other like family. Tease each other, push each other like family.

When Griffin asks if they will give it all another chance?

She nods. If Griffin thinks he can do this, she knows that he can.

Rizavi gives a brusque nod, too. Kinkade, when the attention of the room turns to him, doesn’t really move except to drop his head slightly, breaking their gaze.

Griffin must decide to take that as at least marginal agreement, because he blows out a long, half-relieved and half-tense breath. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s take the rest of the morning to decompress, and we’ll tackle our assignment again in the afternoon. One step at a time.”

The rest of the morning is… odd. Careful. Not easy, but more… free than the time here has felt. Leifsdottir can hear the regular tick of rhythms coming from Kinkade’s headphones, listens with half an ear as Griffin and Rizavi chat quietly, working through a variety of stretches that Leif is familiar with from hers and Griffin’s post-workout routine. Leif herself takes out her favorite stress ball and begins working at it with her thumbs, smoothing a dent into its surface and watching as the colors shift. 

Lunch is honestly more lighthearted than any of them really expects, with the prospect of their assignment still suspended over their heads. But Leifsdottir and Rizavi have drifted from a discussion of favorite foods into a mutual rant about the texture of mushy peas, with the occasional contribution from Griffin about how Leif reacts to foods she really doesn’t like, and even Kinkade giving the occasional barely-audible hum of agreement. 

As they finish their meals, conversation slows, and silence threatens to take over the space once more.

“So,” Griffin says at last. “Anything shake loose for any of you while we had our little interlude?”

The moments tick by, Kinkade’s face showing one of its stormier versions of blank silence, Rizavi clearly wanting to start her own flow of words again so she can hear herself think but watching Leifsdottir carefully, to give her a chance. Leif, meanwhile, is struggling.

“Leif?” Griffin prompts.

“I still have nothing solid to contribute,” Leif says, “but I do have an idea. It may be wrong.”

Griffin nods, recognizing the issue. Neither of them likes being wrong.

For Ina, making an error means there is bad data in her system and it could be throwing everything else off. Her maps could be wrong. She doesn't like acting on information she is not sure of, because action creates experience and experience creates maps. She hates it when her maps are bad.

For Griffin, it is more about living up to certain standards. She has never managed to thoroughly understand why he feels the need to live up to those standards, but there are some elements she can follow the logic of, and she can certainly relate to the resulting bad feeling when one discovers one is wrong, and the need to avoid it.

But between the two of them, they have made a pact. There is information that cannot always be communicated directly, but that needs to be communicated. They cannot afford to leave certain gaps in their knowledge of each other. Sometimes that means guessing.

Sometimes that means being wrong.

They have made it into a game.

It is somehow easier to think of it as losing a game, even on occasions when it is being played in terrible earnest.

They still don’t usually play in front of anyone else. Not at a volume that any witnesses can hear. But here? Now? They can’t afford to be their own little bubble, to shut the others out, especially not today. They have to… Ina takes a breath… they have to let the others see.

“Help me?” she asks, holding out a hand to Griffin.

The assignment they have been working on is to form a plan of action for a survival scenario in which two vessels have crash-landed on a planet with unpredictable, high winds. There are ten survivors, three of whom are injured, and their assignment is to formulate a plan which has the highest chance of survival for all of them. They have lost contact with their base of operations and know that any craft sent after them will need to be specially fitted to adjust for the planet’s weather in order for it to have any hope of successfully retrieving them.

The four of them have mostly spent their time here arguing about whether there is any chance of independent launch and escape, or if the smartest course of action is to determine how to allocate their resources to extend the time they can survive until rescue. The four of them, in this case, mostly meaning Griffin and Rizavi, with the occasional contribution from one of the other two.

Griffin clenches his jaw, but of course he reaches across the table, taking Leif’s hand. “You’re sure about this?” he asks.

“Right,” she responds, making sure he knows she understands what he’s asking.

Kinkade stands and starts moving the lunch things out of the way. Rizavi, who is frankly staring, has just opened her mouth to ask what the hell they are doing when she feels Kinkade brush past her shoulder brusquely. Even in the limited space here, it's clearly intentional. 

She doesn’t know what message it was intended to convey, but she takes it as a  _ Don’t do what you were about to do, this is not about us. _

She huffs in annoyance, but she did promise to give Ina space. Quiet.

Meanwhile, Griffin takes his next move. Leifsdottir hadn’t taken a firm side in the argument, but she had seemed to be tending more towards planning for surviving until rescue (at least to him - that’s what he’d been arguing for himself), so he guesses, “You have an idea about how to make a plan for long-term survival on the planet’s surface.”

“Wrong,” Leif says.

“Okay,” he says, “so it’s an idea for escaping the planet’s atmosphere with the ships intact.” He can get on board with the idea, if Leif thinks she can make it work.

“Right.”

“A method for increasing available engine power?”

“Wrong.”

“For increasing our ability to navigate safely in the winds.”

“Right.”

“A mechanical adjustment?”

“...Potentially both mechanical and computational. I don’t have a detailed plan, I only have….” Leifsdottir trails off again.

“The edge of an idea,” Griffin finishes for her.

“Right.”

“You want to develop a way to keep steady in those winds? With the equipment we have?” Griffin gestures to the lists they’ve been given, the reports of damaged equipment and less-than-ideal working conditions. He tries not to let disbelief color his tone too much.

“Right,” Leif answers, eyes down, face lax. She knows to disregard his frustration at moments like this. 

“Leif, be honest with me. The weather they’re describing… I know you’re good. You’re the best, when it comes to meteorology and adaptation. But could you really pilot through that?”

Leifsdottir looks uncomfortable, and her hand clenches around Griffin’s. 

“I know, not a fair question. We’re still trying to find the edge of this idea, not time to start assessing it yet. Let me rephrase. Could you keep up with all the factors you’d need to, to pilot in that weather?”

“A given stream, yes. All of it, no. If there were two of me. Maybe three.”

Rizavi scoffs. She manages, just barely, to hold back her comment about how Leif clearly doesn’t trust anyone here to match her, mentally. 

Leifsdottir reacts to the noise by pulling her hand back out of Griffin’s, into her own space. “I said it wrong,” Leif says, tensing up, curling in on herself. “I said that very badly. We should stop.”

This time it’s Griffin who holds out his hand. “No. We’re just not there yet. Let’s give it another shot.” He wiggles his fingers as if to draw her attention back to them. “Leif.” 

Neither of the others have ever seen Griffin this patient, didn’t know he was capable of it. 

Leif yields to his coaxing and puts her hand back in his. “Okay,” she says.

“There’s some kind of software implementation you want to try that might do some of the work for you,” he guesses.

“Right.”

“Okay, but you know we can’t risk autopilot in that kind of mess.”

“Not the standard one, no,” she agrees.

“You’re saying that we need the autopilot to be different?”

Leif nods. “Right. Variable.”

For Kinkade, watching Griffin try so gently and patiently to tease the idea out of where it’s knotted up in Leifsdottir’s head, he feels, unwillingly, the same effect on some of the ideas he’s been toying with but unwilling to risk speaking aloud.

He still doesn’t want to, and it almost makes him more annoyed at the others that he finds himself murmuring, “Responsive. Soft against the wind, like a sail.” 

“Right,” Leif responds, and it feels like something clicking into place.

“Wait, wait,” Rizavi says, unable to contain herself any longer. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting? That we completely wipe and reprogram the autopilot?”

Griffin frowns thoughtfully. “I think what we’re suggesting,” he says, “is building our own.”

Leif nods vigorously. “If we make use of fractal math,” she says, “we should be able to…”

And they’re off, scrambling for datapads, and when the displays aren’t big enough to hold the concepts they’re discussing, good, old-fashioned paper.

Kinkade sits and lets the conversation wash over him, partly trying to get a handle on it in case there’s something else he actually wants to contribute, partly trying to puzzle out the enigmas who are his teammates - and himself.

How can Griffin be so soft with Leifsdottir when he is so hard with everyone else? How can Leifsdottir seemingly simply turn off her usually so closed-off demeanor and be so open with him? How can Rizavi compromise for Leifsdottir when Rizavi famously compromises for no one?

How might Kinkade do the same? Does he want to?

Pushing past the habit he’s developed, to take things in whenever he has the chance but only react when absolutely necessary, seems daunting. He likes his habit. It’s simple in execution, lowers expectations, and it’s worked for him pretty well so far.

But then Leifsdottir says, “The most dangerous aspect of developing an automatic algorithm for predicting and responding to weather patterns is the risk that the response will be disproportionately large, and the algorithm will cause more problems than it solves.”

There’s something there… something about anti-feedback measures in live audio recording. Kinkade fights himself over saying anything, and then wonders why he’s fighting himself so hard. 

He’s always wanted to be excellent at something. He remembers a time when he saw being a pilot as the way to be excellent, to do something worth doing, without the risks of putting himself out there that came with being a filmmaker. 

He sighs. There is no greatness without risk, he supposes.

He joins the conversation.

☸

Hours later they still haven't gotten where they need to be, but at least they know they’re on the right track now.

It’s Leifsdottir who notices that Kinkade is looking a little frayed around the edges. To her eyes, anyway. To her eyes, he looks the way she feels.

“I would like a break,” she says.

Griffin looks around at the other cadets under his command. Rizavi is scowling down at the array of papers spread across the floor, pulling at her hair. Kinkade is rubbing at his head. With Ina the signs are small, but her motions have acquired a slightly drifting quality, something he’s only seen before when she’s been up at the farm with her family after a long day of celebration. 

Not necessarily a bad thing, then. But maybe it is time for a break.   
“Okay,” Griffin says. “Take ten. We could all use a few minutes.”

It’s Kinkade who objects. “No, no, I got something here, I wanna get this done.” 

Rizavi gives him a look. “You’ve been staring at the same diagram for the last fifteen minutes,” she says. “Whatever it is, go, let it shake itself loose. Do whatever you have to do to get more precious gems out of that brain of yours."

Kinkade sighs, rubbing at his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, “okay.” He stands and heads for the shower. It’s the only change of scenery remotely available.

He only realizes how tense and worked-up he’s gotten when he finds himself fumbling with the controls for the shower, then with the bottles of soap. He only realizes he’s picked up the wrong one when the scent from his sponge hits him - something like pine, and breathmints? Anyway it’s good, sharp enough to help him start coming back to himself but with an earthy element that’s calming. Griffin’s, probably. 

Well, it’s what he’s got now, and maybe it will help shake something loose, the way Rizavi suggested. It tingles brightly against his skin. 

He takes a breath, and lets the hot water flow over him. This is good. This is better. 

Why is this all getting under his skin so badly?

Well. There are parts of it he could guess at. If he actually felt like taking a long, hard look at himself and his choices and, yeah, his issues. 

Might be time he does that.

So. The team thing. They’ve all got egos, they all want to be here because being on this team means something. Because they want to excel. Not necessarily because they want to be on a team, with everything that that entails. 

He’s gotten as far as he has here without getting invested in anyone, and he’d kind of thought he could muddle through this test the same way. Might even make it easier for everyone if he kept walls up.

But now all the rest of them are just setting their egos aside and cooperating, compromising like real teammates. And here he is, beating against his walls from the inside, struggling to meet them in the middle. 

Why is this so hard?

Could it be as simple as just getting out of the habit of opening up?

“Fuck,” he murmurs, letting his head fall back against the shower wall.

It might be more than ten minutes later that he’s finally getting back into clothes and stepping out of the warm, damp little room and back into the main area. The others have already started again, and the place is even more a blizzard of d-pads and paper. The spot he’d been sitting is gone, but there’s a free spot next to Leifsdottir where she’s leaning up against one of the bunks.

A fresh perspective is probably good, at this point.

For once, she doesn’t shift away. Probably too much going on in that head of hers to notice he’s there.

She seems to be trying to get all of the ideas they’ve had so far in order in her head, because she’s asking for everyone to repeat the pieces they’ve contributed. For a little while, at least, and then she seems to lose her momentum.

It isn’t too long after they’ve reconvened that she goes quiet, and her head droops against Kinkade's shoulder.

It’s a minute later that Griffin turns in their direction, looking for input. “Leifsdottir?” he prompts. But Leif doesn’t even stir.

Kinkade looks down. “She’s asleep,” he says, with a kind of blank shock.

He’d thought she disliked him. The way she wrinkled her nose whenever he went near her, edged away, like he was something disgusting in comparison to her fastidious self, like he smelled bad, even if he’d just showered…

_ Oh. _

“I used your soap,” he tells Griffin. “I’d say I’m sorry, but…”

Griffin seems to snap out of his own wide-eyed stare, expression going more thoughtful. “No, yeah,” he says, “that’s fine, that’s great. I can share.”

For a moment, Kinkade thinks he’s suggesting something else. Wait, what had they been talking about? Oh, yeah. Soap. He’s offering to share his soap. 

“...Think I’ll take you up on that,” Kinkade responds belatedly, and shifts slightly so that Leifsdottir looks a little more comfortable.

“Huh,” Rizavi says, and for once, she can think of nothing else to say.

☸

From Cadet Ina Leifsdottir’s report on the Ares Squadron isolation test:

This particular assignment has given me a new perspective on the concept of teamwork. Most instructors, when giving advice on the topic of working in groups, will emphasize the need for a given individual to compromise, and to modify one’s own habits to better align with the needs of the rest of the group. It seems that it is just as important to communicate one’s own needs, and learn how the group might better mesh with the individual. It seems none of us entered the exercise prepared to be selfish in this way. We all struggled to adapt to a group in which no one was willing to put forth a need to adapt to. 

Given time and motivation, we learned to ask for what we needed in a constructive fashion. I hope that this is a skill that we can all make use of going forward, both with each other and in other aspects of our lives.

☸

From Cadet Ryan Kinkade’s report on the Ares Squadron isolation test:

I guess there’s a reason the word “teamwork” has the word “work” in it. 

This team’s definitely still a work in progress. But at least now we’re all on the same page about getting there. I wasn’t sure in the beginning. 

I’m used to sitting back and watching from a distance. Sometimes I might even say I’m good at it. I can see things as an impartial observer. That wasn’t what this team needed from me, and it was a challenge.

Sometimes seeing takes a little more work than looking. Sometimes all it takes to have your idea of someone totally flipped on its head is a little change in perspective. 

☸

From Cadet Nadia Rizavi’s report on the Ares Squadron isolation test:

The last few weeks have been enlightening, to say the least. I learned things not only about my teammates’ capabilities, but about my own capabilities. 

This was a challenge for all of us, but we rose to the challenge. We all contributed in our own unique ways.

This is a team of consummate professionals with a wide range of talents between the four of us. We had the situation well under control. 

☸

From Cadet James Griffin’s report on the Ares Squadron isolation test:

This mission was a challenge for all of us. There were a lot of factors, more factors than I had anticipated needing to balance. Leadership is something I thought I was ready for. As it turns out, I wasn’t. 

Maybe it’s one of those parts of life that you’re never completely ready for. 

We did not have the situation under control. At first. But then we learned, and we got better.


End file.
